The Death of American Hegemony

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1:01with the most awarded SUV ever, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and freedom that can't be denied, with the open air freedom and Jeep Gladiator. After 85 years, it's no surprise that Jeep became America's SUV brand. Get a great deal during the Jeep Drive into Fall Sales event. Jeep is one more awards over its lifetime than any other SUV brand, even the Jeep Grill or Registered Trademarks of FCAUS LLC. Shop Vons and Albertsons for fresh savings every time you shop. This week at Vons and Albertsons, get fresh, boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $199 per pound limit 10 pounds. And locally grown, grape-ary cotton candy grapes are $299 per pound with digital coupon. Plus 24 packs of Canada Dry or 7-Up 12-ounce cans are $499 limit 1 with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in! These deals won't last. Visit Vons or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. Welcome to Ike It Happen Here, a podcast about the death of empire

2:04and its nightmare afterlife. I'm your host, Mia Wong. We are living through the end of something, an epoch, an age, a way of life, a democracy. We have covered this end to a series of prisms from the peer and total dissent of the presidency into a form of autocratic rule by fiat to the destruction of even the most basic state capacity, phirology, meteorology, that now largely forgotten time that he funded the nuke police, the death of American science and the wounds dealt to the education system, ISIS full on ethnic cleansing of a significant portion of the American population. This is the end of America as it has existed since the end of World War II. But it is also the death of the Pax Americana.

3:05And today we're going to be looking not just at the death of what was in America. We're going to be looking at what it means in terms of the American empire. We're going to be looking at the Pax Americana, the modern era of American hegemony. We're going to be looking at what it was. It's deep and profound ties and origins in the US Navy. And how the remnants of that era and the empire that had been so carefully bloodily constructed over the course of centuries was shattered by the Trump administrations attempt to do an even more over-at-form imperialism. The era of American hegemony is over. And before we continue into the endless waking nightmare, let us look at what it was. Now, I have been talking about the death of American hegemony for a while now,

4:07originally in the context of the apoccal disaster of the American War with Iran. And recently we've seen one of the most embarrassing and humiliating incidents and evidences of failure of the old American system, which is the declaration and then subsequent walking back, immediate walking back, it failure to launch of what was called economic D-Day. So for people who have forgotten what economic D-Day was because I don't blame you, this was such a fiasco, economic D-Day was supposed to be this enormous campaign of secondary sanctions against anyone trading with Iran spread over a number of sectors. This was designed to cripple what remained of the Iranian economy. And there was a giant press blitz about it. Again, they were calling it economic D-Day. And now, multiple weeks later, we have a couple of sanctions.

5:09If a few sanctions that they applied at the time, we now have some sanctions against some Iranian airlines and a sanction against a Turkish bank. Now, again, originally when this was described, this was described as sort of like American total economic war. If the US would completely isolate Iran from all of its trading partners, however, comma, in order to do this, you would have to actually go after China. And the Trump administration has obviously had trade disputes with China, but the kind of sanctions they would need to levy in order to actually, you know, completely isolate Iran or something that the US is simply not willing to pursue. Because get this, the US and China make an enormous amount of money both from trading with each other. Now, what's interesting here is that this kind of devastating economic campaign, this is something that the United States used to be able to do.

6:09Now, obviously, wouldn't have been able to do it easily, right? But this kind of sort of, in theory, right, coalition built large-scale sanctioned package to completely economically isolated country, this is what the American Empire has always been best at. And the fact that the US can't do it now, signals a fundamental transformation in death of what the old American Empire was. Now, to do the tie-in to the Navy here, because the Navy is a crucial part of the story and about what, you know, the sort of Pax Americana was, just to explain this very simply, right, a huge portion of whatever the Pax Americana was, was the ability of the American Navy and its sort of supremacy over most of the world's oceans. Its ability to maintain open, safe, and stable trade routes for global capital. And to sort of, ineligently pivot to this sort of naval apparatus, we can notice that D-Day was also an exercise in American naval power that is sort of astounding.

7:15I mean, the ability to do forest projection on the other side of the world on that scale is sort of mind-boggling for most of human history. And it's a demonstration of the way in which American Higginity was built by the Navy. Now, obviously, the US originally is a land empire in ways that are very easily sort of naturalized and forgotten. Right, the United States is a settler colony. It was built on a series of genocidal exterminations and land seizures from the indigenous people who had been here before over the course of centuries and centuries continuing to this day. So there is on the one hand, right, this in some ways very conventional settler colonial land empire. But there's also always been a significant naval component to the United States because of, you know, how settlers got to the colony and then also because of the economic ties that those settlers maintained with Europe

8:18and the ways that trade networks developed, you know, the US has always, to some extent, been a naval oriented power as its sort of establishing, as it sort of did its genocides across the constantness of North America. But for our purposes, there's an important departure in the history of the American empire and how it functions in the mid to late 1800s. And it particularly intensifies around this guy. He was just kind of a random Navy captain named Alfred Fayer Mayhan who writes this book called the influence of sea power upon history. It's this book basically arguing that if you're going to be a great empire, you need to have sea power. Right, you need to be able to sort of like maintain control over the world's oceans. He releases this in 1890. A lot of what this turns into is this attempt, you know, in the sort of reorientation of the American Navy around pushing into the Pacific.

9:18Now, obviously the Navy had always been a tool of American imperialism. It is what the US used to enforce its rule over Latin America. And this is even before this sort of late era that we're talking about, even before the 1890s, right? When you're looking at sort of American interventions in Latin America, a lot of that is being done through the US Navy. But Mayhan is responsible, this kind of too strong of a word, but he's an influential theorist of this push, you know, west into the Pacific. It's this that the 1890s is this era of, oh, well, we've done manifest destiny. We've like conquered this fucking brutal genocidal empire from coast to coast. And there's this question of where we're going next and where we're going next turns out to be okay. We need to be able to sort of refuel ships across the Pacific. So we need to see control of these islands that will allow us to have like cold refueling stations. So we can continue to move with project naval power through the Pacific.

10:19This turns into a, like the Spanish-American war, which is, you know, not a war that is fought in Spain. It is a war that is fought in Cuba and in the Philippines and at sea. And it also leaves the creation of what's called the White Fleet by theodore Roosevelt, which is... I can plant a lot on this show about how just there is no such thing as subtlety anymore. And it's true that there is not subtlety now. There was also not subtlety back then. When he read a story, it was stuff about it. Everyone goes, oh, it was called the White Fleet because the holes of the ship were white. And it's like, yeah, okay, like, yes, technically speaking, that is true. But every single one of these just unhinged racists who were involved in this entire project, like everyone knows what it means to have a fleet called the White Fleet.

11:21Right? You know, this is the fleece that is used to sort of, like, it was called opening Japan. But like, you know, it's used to just force Japan to open itself, sort of Western traders and Western imperialism. As a result of this, you also see eventually sort of the various stages of, like, conquest and annexation of Hawaii. And what you're seeing is, in effect, the American Empire entering its sea era. What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Skypop Protein Soda. Skypop Protein Soda has 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar and real delicious soda taste. Skypop Protein Soda, reach for the sky. Get your Skypop Protein Soda now at Target or King Super's. I'm Britt Coleman and I'm Trevor Sikama. If you ever watched a game and wondered what really made the difference beyond the final score, that's exactly why we created NFL Pro. Stroke got a man wide open. Touchdown! Stay locked!

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14:31It's C-era is the era in which it's international ambitions really, really expand. Now obviously the US has been doing Dave Linterventions on the other side of the world. Basically since the moment it was founded, there's obviously the very famous war with the Barbary States that the US has right after it's founded. But this period marks this transformation of the US into something that's not quite accurate to call it true global force projection. But that's what happens over the course of World War I and then World War II. This gets us into talking about the sort of Pax Americana itself. If you're familiar with the term, it comes from this period of Roman history. It was called the Pax Romano where you have this relatively unchallenged Roman Empire ruling as a regional and global headgemon.

15:36It was able to enforce some kind of degree of peace. Obviously we say peace right and obviously anyone who has lived through this period is well aware that no, obviously this is not an enormously peaceful time. It is, I guess, technically less war than like World Wars I and II. This is true of the Pax Romano too. This isn't actual peace. It's just a time in which there is an empire that is large enough that there aren't really as many sort of hot wars. But what's sort of called the Pax Americana starts after World War II. This is important for a number of regions. One is the effect of World War II on the rest of the world. The US has a significant portion of the entire world's manufacturing economy after the end of the war. It's one of a very small number of intact industrial belts that exist in the world after the war.

16:40Also, Woodward II shatters, it overturns the old sort of world-powered system in which the French and British empires, and also by this point, like the Bergen German Empire, Nazi Empire, and the Japanese fascist empire had sort of been dividing up the world. But it's this real death knelt specifically for our purposes for the British who go from being the kind of naval power of the US is modeling itself after. This naval empire with the ability to project force anywhere that's able to rule over vast swaths of territory because it completely controls the seas. Or controls enough of the seas that it has control of naval and trade lines. The British Navy gets just annihilated in World War II, and the British Empire just doesn't have the resources to maintain itself. And through also a bunch of anti-colonial rebellions, it gets a tear itself apart. For sort of capitalism to function and for it to function efficiently, you need someone who has the naval power to control the seas.

17:48And you need this because this is how trade operates. And this is going to become especially true as this period goes on in ways we will talk about in a moment. So at the end of World War II, the US is sort of the driving force in a lot of ways behind, I mean, obviously the Allied powers are involved in various ways in establishing the United Nations. But the US becomes kind of the seat of like the world's sort of global economic and institutional apparatus, right? If the IMF of the World Bank, you know, let me think the United Nations meets in New York, right? And, and this is maybe the most important thing for our purposes right now, the US becomes the world's reserve currency. And it also becomes the currency in which you buy oil, which is also just an incredibly important advantage. And this is the basis of the American Empire. And one of the things that makes it so powerful is that, you know, this is what's called seniorage privilege, right?

18:53Which is that like everything is being operated. The whole world economy is being operated in US dollars. It is the world reserve currency. You can buy almost anything with it. And what that means for the US is like, A, every time the US prints a dollar bill, right? It's however much it costs to like make a bill and then like $100 exists now. And then B, and this is also extremely important, the US can't run out of dollars in the same way that, you know, other countries we've talked about this before in other episodes, in the same way that other countries can run out of American dollars, which causes massive sort of economic crises. The US doesn't have that problem, right? Like obviously you have to do like inflation management, but you can't just like run out of dollars in a way that like anyone else in the world can. And this is also the currency where, you know, US government bonds become the currency at the rest of the world's reserve banks put their money in.

19:54So this means that the entire rest of the world by like by purchasing these bonds, right, is effectively just like subsidizing anything the US government wants to do, you know, government bonds are government debt, right? And most of the government debt, it turns out, is war debt because what the US wants to do over this period and again, calling it the Pax Americana, but like the thing the US ramps up government's venue to do is fight horrifying imperialist wars in Korea and Vietnam. But these are like bankrolled for large extent by these sort of large scale bond purchases. But that is the deal of sort of the Pax Americana, which is that the US has this enormous military, it will quote unquote protect you from communism. That is a twin pronged thing on the one hand, right, you have, and this is why I've been talking so much about the world of the US Navy, you have the US Navy maintaining open shipping lines around the world. And then on the other hand, you have the US, shall we say, three letter agencies and also the military and also still the Navy, you know, doing interventions and doing genocide and a whole bunch of countries in order to like keep the communist out of the world.

21:09But the deal is you buy into the American protection racket, right, the US will put a shit ton of military bases in your country, you will buy American bonds, you let the dollar be the world reserve currency. And in exchange for this, you're supposed to get again, secure trade lines and the capitalist class gets to like maintain its control, the means of production and the workers do not get to have that stuff. Now, the importance of these shipping lanes are exacerbated by the other sort of wing of what you would call this. I don't know, it's maybe a little bit too, well, I don't think it's too out here to say this is also sort of another wing of American anti communism and not, you know, just like the war on the global working class in general, which is the expansion intensification of what's called containerization, which is, you know, based on shipping containers, right.

22:16It's the process that begins what's called off-shoring where dealing with this sort of declining global profits and the rising power of the working class in a number of countries, the global capitalist economy spearheaded by the United States figure out that using these giant shipping and logistics lines and using these shipping containers, they can shift their manufacturing off to more impoverished countries and countries in which it's easier to just machine gun workers. And this allows companies to reduce wages and have a firmer grasp on the control of the means of production by again, just machine gunning workers if they try to go on strike. But in order to be able to suddenly make your cars not in the United States, but somewhere else, say, for example, Mexico or China, you need to be able to do this massive set of shipping things, right, because also you're now you're now working in these extremely long supply chains that like stretch all over the world and are bringing parts of a bunch of different places and they're being assembled at different place and they're being assembled at another place.

23:24In order to sort of pit the workers of every single one of these places against each other and then pit those workers who are working on it against the workers you know a lot of work. This is what's known as the spatial fix by the way. It's a cherry was popularized by Marxist, Geographer David Harvey. I think it's older than him or his work, but I am blanking right now on exactly where it's from. Yeah, but the product of the spatial fix is that the capitalist class is able to keep making money the international workers movements is sort of gutted and then has its spine ripped out and you have this sort of like the end of history era. And even at this point right for a lot of countries around the world this deal is worth it because this deal is like shut the fuck up and let the US sort of rig things in its favor is obviously going to like have a bunch of carve outs in these in all these massive free trade deals that advantage it.

24:27You know it's it's going to be running an empire you're going to be complicit in this empire was going to force you to go do its imperialist stuff. But you know it's it's worth it because you the capitalist class of your country get to keep making money. But again all of this was based on the American ability to maintain strain control of the world shipping lanes and this was something that had been uncontested right like I'm going to argue like Somali pirates or whatever but like yeah the US's ability to maintain global shipping isn't even a thing that until Trump decided to invade a wrong that anyone was like thinking about really being contested like obviously you can look at sort of like Chinese expansion in the South trying to see or whatever but like that that's not threatening the ability to move oil around the world. But the problem here for for this empire. Is that it was taken over by people who don't understand how it works like Trump doesn't really understand and I say it doesn't really Trump doesn't understand any of this at all which is why you know it's just never really seem to have a courage to any of the people around them that like they wouldn't be able to take control of the trade of for news.

25:43And American policy towards the straight of for news other than that period where they said they were annexing it has kind of just been to pretend that it's open and also screaming about it not being open at the same time. But this this event this loss of control of one of the most vital shipping lanes in the entire world which the American empire had been able to maintain and keep open even though one of its mortal enemies like border is it right you have been able to keep the shipping lanes open. Not by actually necessarily applying military power but by threatening it right and this is also the important thing about the American empires that American military power always works best when you're threatening it and not when you're actually deploying because once you actually have to like deploy the US army to a place and fight a war that usually turns into a shit. I mean you look you look at the modern American history of wars and it's like okay well you know you have like the absolute nightmares in Vietnam and in a rocket Afghanistan and these these sort of like you know I actually like deploying the American military tends not to work out particularly well for for the American empire.

26:50But the threat of it and the threat of the ability to just you know to kill an unbelievable number of people to inflict this damage is enough to cause other countries to fall in line. What what if the sort of me a long promises if it could happen here is that if you're listening to the show you will know what the plaza chords are and you will know what the reverse plaza chords are. So the plaza chords are this this thing in the 1980s with the US you know the US manufacturing economy is tanking and the US basically ghosts the negotiating table and just says like fuck it your American military protectorants and the you here is Japan and West Germany which are these rising industrial powerhouses right and the US goes fuck you you're going to nuke your own manufacturing economies by increasing the value of your currency. So that we could the US can have a manufacturer economy and Japan and Germany are forced to do it you know they're they're not like explicit about this right but that's that's the underlying tension of what's happening here.

27:54This is the American empire functioning in the packs in Americana as it was designed to function where yeah you have the Japanese economy which in this period is like threatening to overtake. The American economy is large economy in the world and the US is able to just be cap it because it's like no we control the seas we have a million military bases there we can just dictate your economic policy. Like in this is like Ronald Reagan right like we're not talking about like the most subtle technocratic like manager of empire right this is like a senile actor just become president and he's able to do this but Trump is not right. You know Trump sees the raw power of the American empire and goes oh right the point is to use it right like the thing that makes you a man the thing that makes you a nation is just deploying this shit and killing and trying to kill everyone who opposes you. And this has led to him ending the basis of American global hegemony which is like for the first time like since World War two it's like yeah no the US just like can't maintain the global shipping supply right and you know and you can look at the other sort of major challenge to this and opak right where opak is.

29:09To some extent doing this attempt to like prevent the flow of goods through the capital is economy but opak is trying to do it directly from the production and not through the distribution and. And the US responds to this and the attempts by a bunch of other countries to form recall mini packs to form like opaks for like copper instead of oil to form these like mini cartels. For all of the sort of like worlds primary commodities in the US takes this enormously seriously this is the G eight was originally the G seven was founded specifically to head off this threat to defeat it right to the US is always taken. These kind of threats enormously seriously but even even opak was threatening the production of like primary commodities right it was threatening oil it was threatening oil from the production site not from the distribution and now it's like no the US is like losing. Control of the distribution side for no actual like strategic reason and I obviously like I don't I don't want it to sound like I'm angry that the US empire is failing I am in fact quite glad that the US empire is failing.

30:20Although obviously you know the way that it's going out in his death spasm is going to be absolutely hideous right the death of of rule by a single giant empire if it's not actually replaced by the end of empire more generally tends to become a bunch of different empires fighting and you know a bunch of empires fighting and also one empire rule are both bad outcomes that we checks notes do not like. Obviously but it is astonishing the extent to which an incredibly sophisticated and old empire has just been torn apart in a year for no reason and now we have to sort of grapple with what it means that this older form of empire has died and that we're having this sort of new more fascist form of empire rise and fight its horrifying wars. And the actual meaning of this is not just the pure examination of history what this all means is something that is going to be created by people like you and people like me and how rise or fail to rise to the moment the death of empire is created.

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